1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet ink which has high image density, excellent ozone resistance, and high sticking recovery property and storage stability, and, to an ink set which uses the ink as black ink. The present invention also relates to an ink jet recording method, a recording unit, an ink cartridge and an ink jet recording apparatus each using the ink set.
2. Related Background Art
An ink jet recording method is a recording method of applying a small ink droplet to any one of recording media such as plain paper and glossy media to form an image, and has become rapidly widespread owing to reduction in costs and improvement in recording rate. With the rapid spread of digital cameras in addition to improvement in the quality of images recorded by the method, the method has been generally used as a method of outputting photographic images comparable to silver halide photograph.
In recent years, image quality has undergone improvement more than ever owing to, for example, extreme reduction in size of an ink droplet and an improvement of the color gamut involved in the introduction of multi-color ink. Meanwhile, there have been growing demands for coloring materials and inks, and stricter property have been required in respect of improvement of color developability, whereby, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-290552, such a coloring material and ink have been demanded more stringently to have improved color developability, and reliability such as sticking recovery property or ejection stability.